Live data from Hacker News

There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

nytimes.com

81–90 of 304 posts

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#81

A few years ago they drilled for gas a few kilometers outside the city (about 3 km from my house) — this caused a faint humming noise that seemed to come from everywhere but nowhere in particular. Stand still in a room, hear the noise. Lie down, cover your ears, hear the noise. Put earplugs in, hear the noise. Hugely annoying if you're the kind of person that doesn't sleep well with such nuisances. Boy was I happy wh…

I double this idea

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#83
post #79

I'm listening to this right now [1] and (for those of you who don't have a chance to hear it right now) it definitely isn't what I would call a "hum"... that's way too gentle and not bass enough to describe this sound. I'd call it more like low-frequency rumbling (though that's probably not a perfect word for it either). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPDILKQjJW8

It's actually a not unpleasant brown noise-like sound. At least that's how it comes out of my hifi. Over bluetooth and after YouTube compression so perhaps high fidelity isn't the right term.

I'm not sure... for me the unfiltered version was annoying but bearable for a bit... but I could see getting driven mad by it after a while. The filtered version was so bad that it almost made me wonder if I'm going to damage my ears, so I stopped listening to it halfway. I was using decent BT headphones so I'm not sure if that makes any difference... it may depend on how decent your speakers are at playing 30-40 Hz.

(Side note: Does BT audio do some kind of lossy compression? Why is it relevant that you mentioned it here?)

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#84
post #72

I don't buy it at all. The article takes a very strangely sympathetic tone toward the whole situation. The noise has been narrowed down to one island that has "a few blasting operations". So stop the operations and see if the hum goes away. Then have each one restart one at a time. Or bo binary search, whatever. It doesn't matter. The obvious takeaway here is that the city/state/province does not care. They are too d…

It's complicated by the fact that United States Steel is in the US, whereas Windsor is in Canada. It's not just a local government issue, it's an international issue.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#85
post #27

Sigh. I've coded too much this week. My brain just immediately went to: comment out half the city at a time and binary search the source. Guess you can't really do that. I wonder if the hum persists during a power outage.

Replace "comment out" by "turn off the electricity for" and maybe we can binary search it.

Your implicit assumption is that the hum is caused by something electrical; i.e. not a diesel engine or some natural cause.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#86
post #26
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder if you can train yourself to ignore it. The same way some fucked up people train themselves to ignore smoke detector chirps. I've known a couple of these people in my life. They managed to live with a chirping detector for weeks on end and when you bring it up they think you're making mountains out of molehills.

... fascinating. There's no way that's easier than replacing the battery or even the detector itself. Why suffer through something so trivially fixable?

Exponential discounting. Immediately after a beep, it's several seconds until the next beep, making it far less important to fix.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#87
post #85
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace "comment out" by "turn off the electricity for" and maybe we can binary search it.

Your implicit assumption is that the hum is caused by something electrical; i.e. not a diesel engine or some natural cause.

Then we can turn off the electricity for the whole town and see if it stops! :D

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#88

A few years ago they drilled for gas a few kilometers outside the city (about 3 km from my house) — this caused a faint humming noise that seemed to come from everywhere but nowhere in particular. Stand still in a room, hear the noise. Lie down, cover your ears, hear the noise. Put earplugs in, hear the noise. Hugely annoying if you're the kind of person that doesn't sleep well with such nuisances. Boy was I happy wh…

On the YouTube video it definitely does sound like something strong going on underground... but that's probably a very poor method of assessment.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#89

A few years ago they drilled for gas a few kilometers outside the city (about 3 km from my house) — this caused a faint humming noise that seemed to come from everywhere but nowhere in particular. Stand still in a room, hear the noise. Lie down, cover your ears, hear the noise. Put earplugs in, hear the noise. Hugely annoying if you're the kind of person that doesn't sleep well with such nuisances. Boy was I happy wh…

How does one eliminate the noise?

One of those sensory deprivation chambers?

Audio insulation?

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#90

Sigh. I've coded too much this week. My brain just immediately went to: comment out half the city at a time and binary search the source. Guess you can't really do that. I wonder if the hum persists during a power outage.

Just install the debugging microphones all over, collect the data, find the source (if it's real).
Post reply on HN